Avoiding Extraordinary
by CalamitySnidget
Summary: Oneshot. When Harry gets his letters from Hogwarts in PS, Dudley shares his parents' opinion on the matter. Mostly. But Vernon and Petunia's feelings have more of an impact on Dudley's future than he'll ever reveal. No magical freak school for him!


**Avoiding Extraordinary **

Disclaimer: The characters and places you recognize aren't mine, of course. I promise I'll put them back in J.K. Rowling's toybox when I'm through with them!

_It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.  
_- Anthony Robbins

* * *

Having missed Harry with his Smelting stick when his cousin left the kitchen to get the post, Dudley was in a nasty temper. When the scrawny boy came back in staring at something in his hand, Dudley was hoping for another shot. 

Harry deposited a few envelopes in front of his dad and sat down. His dad flipped the first envelope off the pile—it was a bill—and opened a letter from Aunt Marge. Dudley reached over slowly and gave his cousin a small jab with the Smelting stick. Harry didn't appear to notice, so Dudley was about to repeat the jab a bit harder, when he noticed what Harry was holding.

"Dad!" said Dudley suddenly. "Dad, Harry's got something!"

His dad had immediately snatched the letter from Harry, and very shortly after, everyone had become very cross.

Dudley didn't know what to make of it all, but he really wanted to know what that letter said. It seemed to be causing an awful lot of trouble. And anything that got Harry in trouble was something he was sure to find very interesting.

His parents, however, weren't in the mood to be sharing. His dad was still in a huff when he came home from work, and Harry was still locked in his cupboard. Dudley was unaccustomed to not getting what he wanted, but no matter how he pestered his mother to let him know what was going on, she merely frowned and waved him away. The whole thing was very dissastisfying, and after supper Dudley both showed his displeasure and amused himself by stamping up and down the stairs over Harry's head as loudly as he could manage.

He was astounded when his father came out of the kitchen and told him off for all the pounding and sent him up to his room. He dawdled on his way up, and was even further shocked to see his dad open the cupboard under the stairs and squeeze inside to talk to Harry!

When his father came out again with Harry in tow and installed his cousin in his second bedroom, Dudley flew into a temper tantrum to rival his best--but to no avail.

He didn't quite know how or why, but by the time he went to bed that night, he had lost his second bedroom to Harry, and his parents were distracted and simply shushed him while he persisted in trying every trick he knew to get it back.

Over the next few days, as more and more letters addressed to Harry began arriving, Dudley grew just as painfully curious as his cousin over what those strange crisp envelopes contained. Though perhaps Dudley was a bit more concerned than Harry about his father's mental health. Harry was simply irritable over being denied his very peculiar mail.

When his dad began driving them all over Britain in an attempt to elude the mysterious person that wanted so badly to communicate with Harry, Dudley was more than a bit uncertain of the plan. There was just something a bit too strange about the way the letters kept arriving, and the way they were addressed. After the first night away from home, a stack of letters still greeted them in the hotel that morning. Dudley figured the letters were going to come no matter where they went, and if that were the case, he would rather be at home with his television and computer games. He gave this opinion loudly and frequently, as his dad ignored him once more and piled everyone back in the car for more erratic motoring around. Everyone was in a foul mood.

Morale did not increase a bit when they all saw the hut on the rock.

* * *

Dudley was in rather a lot of shock and bawled all the way back to Privet Drive. His parents wouldn't even try to soothe him. His mum was pale and quiet, and his dad's face cycled from white to red to purple, and back again, and he muttered to himself under his breath as he drove them back to Surrey. 

A _giant_ had crashed into their hut last night, said that Harry was a wizard, yelled at his dad, and done _magic!_

After an enormous amount of shouting, Dudley and his parents had huddled in the hut's rear room all night. When his dad finally dared to check out the door the next morning, the giant had gone and taken Harry with him. And Dudley still had a tail.

He squirmed on his seat in the car, feeling the tail beneath him, and bawled louder. His parents still didn't even look at him.

When they got home, Dudley's parents immediately disappeared upstairs and locked their bedroom door behind them. He could hear muffled bellowing and shrieking from within.

Dudley stood blankly in the hall for a moment, finished with his noise-making now that there was no longer an audience. He thought about going and banging on his parents' door with his Smelting stick and demanding that they take care of him. After all, he was the one who'd been hocus-pocused.

Where exactly was his Smelting stick?

He looked about for a moment before remembering that it was still in the car. He would make his dad get it for him later.

Wait half a minute…

Dudley looked around the hall again. Then he went and looked in the living room and the kitchen.

There were no parchment envelopes with green ink addresses and purple wax seals anywhere. All of Harry's scattered post had disappeared like magic!

The idea of magic happening in his house while they had been away made Dudley nervous. He supposed that perhaps all the letters had vanished when the giant had allowed his cousin to finally read one of them. As if some powerful person had been spying on them the whole time with an evil spell and now was satisfied. Dudley shivered.

He needed to get a snack and take his mind off it.

He went to rummage through the refrigerator. He found most of a chocolate cake and cut himself a large slice. He had managed to gobble down half of it before the horrid tail twitched, and for the first time in his life, Dudley lost his appetite and had to bin the rest of the cake.

What if Harry came back and made more strange things happen? Even worse things?

Apparently, Harry could do magic and his parents had known it all along. Dudley frowned at the thought. If Harry were to play tricks on them, how would they be able to stop it?

A funny thought slowly penetrated his piggish mind. Maybe…if Dudley had magic too…he would be able to protect himself and his parents. Maybe he could be even better at it than Harry! Harry was only a skinny little annoyance that lived under their stairs; surely if Dudley had magic he would be far more powerful than his cousin.

Dudley grinned as he imagined himself wearing a big cloak covered in stars and moons and turning a cowering Harry into a real pig!

That lovely thought in mind, and hands sticky with chocolate icing, Dudley went to paw through the regular, everyday post on the dining table. It had been mostly forgotten in the fervour over his cousin's letters, and now over a week's worth of the Dursleys' mail was no longer hidden beneath piles of freakish magic letters.

It could be that there were a couple of late-arriving birthday cards for Dudley in here. Unconcerned about any actual cards or sentiments, Dudley still checked, because a birthday card meant the possibility of money inside.

He spotted his name on a blue envelope and triumphantly grabbed at it, then froze.

Facedown underneath the birthday note was an old-fashioned parchment envelope.

Dudley gaped at it. Why would just one of them remain? Could this be a trick? The gears in Dudley's head ground slowly and found a possible excuse that wouldn't frighten him too much.

If Harry was going to a freak school, they were probably going to be after payment. It could be this was just a bill. Not that his dad would pay it.

The boy gingerly reached out and pinched the letter between two fingers, flipped it over, dropped it, and yelped, because oh look, this letter had _his_ name on it in the same green ink as the others.

Mr. D. Dursley  
Second Bedroom From The Stairs  
4 Privet Drive  
Little Whinging  
Surrey

Dudley stared at the envelope lying innocuous on the table. It looked just like Harry's…dare he…dare he imagine that it said the same thing inside?

For a second Dudley was incredibly excited. He really could do magic like Harry!

But…what would his parents say?

Really, when Dudley actually thought about it, the letter meant that he was a freak just like his cousin. Every thought that he'd just had about how amazing it would be to be able to do magic was swept from his head. Because, in the end, it just wasn't normal.

If Dudley told his parents about this letter, he could just see how his dad's face would swell and go purple, and his mum would probably cry. It was clear that they had known that magic was real all these years, and that must have been mostly why they didn't like Harry. He always knew it had to have been something more than Harry being a nuisance and a waste of space, because Harry could cook and clean, and that was _something_ useful.

What if they got so angry that they made _him_ sleep in the cupboard?

Dudley's childlike mind now made connections between magic and a lack of presents at birthdays and Christmases. The eleven-year-old thought also about the differences between how his father talked to him and to Harry. Was magic worth it?

Certainly not! Pulling rabbits out of hats might be a nice trick, but right now there was nothing his parents would not do or get for him. Dudley was quite aware that they doted on him. They wouldn't feel the same about a magical freak. He _had_ to stay an ordinary boy!

With a cry of alarm, Dudley grabbed the unopened letter and hurried upstairs. His parents couldn't be allowed to see it!

He cast a frantic look at their bedroom door, relieved that it was still shut tight. He could hear his mother inside, sobbing now, while his father shouted. He shuddered at the thought of that shouting being directed at him.

Dudley pushed open the door of what used to be his second bedroom. It was Harry's now, he supposed, but the room was still heaped with his old toys. Overflowing from the shelves in one corner of the room was a pile of books that he had never even opened.

Dudley crossed the room with frenzied haste and grabbed a book at random. He opened it to the middle and thrust the letter inside; slamming the book closed as if shutting it firmly enough would stop the letter escaping into the house. He looked around the room, half-gone with the panic of self-preservation. Spying a large plastic robot with a missing arm, he snatched up the toy and managed to prise open its back.

He stuffed the book inside the robot and buried the whole thing under a jumbled mess of more broken toys.

Satisfied, he left the room and shut the door, feeling proud at getting rid of the problem.

However…what if the freaks at that school sent the giant back to drag him away too?

He would just have to make sure that they knew he wasn't coming. Dudley would be going to Smeltings as planned; not any freakish wizard school. He returned to the kitchen and found a sheet of paper and a pencil. On it he wrote:

_I do not want to learn any weirdo magic. I will not  
__come to your school. Don't try to make me._

_Sincerely,  
__Dudley Dursley_

He stuffed the note in an envelope and licked it shut. He couldn't remember what the giant had said the headmaster's name was, but he remembered the name of the school itself, so on the front of the envelope he wrote _Send to Hogwarts School_ in big letters.

Stepping as quietly as he could outside the front door, Dudley tucked the envelope into the box for the postman. It wasn't a proper address, but the letter was meant for people who could do magic. He felt sure that somehow they would get it.

Later that evening, after his parents had emerged and silently slipped back into their daily routines, Harry showed up with all sorts of strange packages and an _owl_ of all things. Dudley sat, uncharacteristically quiet, in front of his downstairs television as his parents sent his cousin to his room and announced that they didn't want to speak to him until he left for his abnormal school.

Dudley's mum made him a large supper and petted and cooed over him while his father worked on figuring out how to get the tail removed.

By the next morning, after checking the post-box and finding that his note to Hogwarts had disappeared overnight, Dudley had managed to put the awful letter with his name on it out of his mind. His parents were relieved that he'd seemed to come back to himself after the scare they'd all had in the ramshackle hut. And if their son seemed a bit skittish when Harry was about, well, that was how any respectable, normal boy should react to a freak.

And upstairs, inside a copy of _Twentieth Century Verse for Beginning Readers_, a parchment letter containing a rejected invitation to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry puffed out of existence, leaving only a few faint scorch marks on the page next to which it had been snugly tucked. The poem on the page was still legible:

_You are the person who has to decide. _

_Whether you'll do it or toss it aside; _

_You are the person who makes up your mind. _

_Whether you'll lead or will linger behind. _

_Whether you'll try for the goal that's afar. _

_Or just be contented to stay where you are.

* * *

_

The verse above was written by Edgar A. Guest.

* * *


End file.
